Abstract

In this thesis, I approach digital sex education in Cairo, Egypt and how it is navigated by Cairo’s urban elite. The way digital sex education in Cairo is consumed via social media and online courses is touted as “new” by popular media coverage. The content, products and services boast the first of their kind by the creators of the platforms themselves. That middle and upper class Cairene women are talking about sex online and consuming digital sex education content, in visible public forums, is portrayed as a completely novel phenomenon—in other words, platforms like Cairo’s first femtech company, Motherbeing, are ushering in the belated and long-anticipated entry of Cairo’s women into modern sex discourses and markets of sexual and reproductive health. Through this project, I argue that the digital sex education movement in Cairo, led by regional femtech giant, Motherbeing, is an iteration of late neoliberal ideologies, in which public discourses around sex and sexual health are not necessarily new, but are increasingly visibilized, digitized and financialized and exceedingly in line with neoliberal notions of the free market. I argue that the digital content, online course material and consumer products produced and circulated by the only femtech entity in Cairo inform and reproduce a modern citizen-subjectivity and that the femtech sector’s potential to subsume sex education into the market is worth examining. Talking about sex and producing sex education content in the public forum is not a new occurrence in Cairo, however the marriage of sex education with digital platforms and femtech corporate structure allows us to raise questions about the subject-making power of digital sex education in the late modern. I will investigate the implications of a potential boom in Cairo’s femtech industry, where futures of homogenization are not liberatory, but reinforce liberal conceptualizations of what it means to be a modern, “sex-educated” subject.

School

School of Global Affairs and Public Policy

Department

Cynthia Nelson Institute for Gender and Women's Studies

Degree Name

MA in Gender & Women's Studies

Graduation Date

Winter 2-28-2024

Submission Date

10-1-2023

First Advisor

Dr. Martina Rieker

Committee Member 1

Dr. Emiko Stock

Committee Member 2

Dr. Ramy Aly

Extent

116 p.

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Institutional Review Board (IRB) Approval

Approval has been obtained for this item

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